Expert says parole not appropriate for dangerous repeat offenders

ELEANOR HALL: We begin today in Melbourne where a judge today sentenced the man convicted of murdering and raping ABC employee, Jill Meagher, to life in prison.

The prosecution revealed last week that Adrian Bayley had been on parole when he committed the brutal crime and that he had a two-decade-long history of violent attacks on women.

While the prosecutors were arguing that he should never be released, the judge said Bayley would be eligible for parole in 35 years.

Jill Meagher's family said justice has been done.

Samantha Donovan was in the Victorian Supreme Court this morning for the sentencing and she joins us now.

So Sam, senior legal figures have been describing this case as a catastrophic failure of the justice system. What did the judge say as he handed down this sentence this morning?

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Eleanor, Justice Geoffrey Nettle said the rape and murder of Jill Meagher was a heinous case. That her rape was savage and degrading and that she was violently strangled.

He went through the events of Jill Meagher's last night, last September. How she'd been out with friends from the ABC for drinks and how Bayley had come across her in the street in Melbourne's northern suburbs, followed her and then dragged her into a laneway and attacked her.

And that he had in all likelihood strangled her because she was threatening to ring the police after he'd raped her or, the judge said, because he got some kind of perverse pleasure out of killing her.

ELEANOR HALL: Did the court hear much about Bayley's previous crimes?

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Yes, we heard a lot about those today, Eleanor. Justice Nettle pointed out that Bayley first started offending when he was 18 and he went through the string of violent rapes that Bayley's been convicted of in the past. He's previously served 11 years for rape and attempted rape.

When he was 18 and Bayley's wife was pregnant with her first child he raped a young woman in his home. Then when he was released on bail in 1990 he attempted to rape a 17-year-old. Then in 2001 he was charged with 16 counts of rape against five victims.

Justice Nettle pointed out that those women were prostitutes who Bayley thought would be easy targets, and he went into quite a bit of detail about how those women were very violently raped and humiliated and how shocking injuries were caused to them.

As we know, Bayley was released on parole in 2010 and as the judge pointed out he offended again almost immediately, attacking a man in Geelong. We know that he was convicted of that offence and then bailed, and of course as we know went on to murder Jill Meagher.

ELEANOR HALL: And members of Jill Meagher's family were in the court today?

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Yes, they were, Eleanor. Jill Meagher's husband, her parents and her brother were all in court. The court was packed. It's one of the very ornate courts in the Victorian Supreme Court building. The public gallery is upstairs.

When the sentence was handed down I heard a couple of people sort of exclaim "yes" under their breath but overall the court was very quiet for the 50 minute hearing.

People with a good view of Bayley said he kept his head down for the entire hearing. Jill Meagher's father, George McKeon, made a short statement outside the court after the sentence was handed down.

GEORGE MCKEON: Jill lived a life full of family, friends, and her beloved Tom. Jill was brutally raped and murdered and is never coming back. Because of Ben Leonard and the team at Victoria Police, and Richard Lewis and his colleagues at Public Prosecutions Victoria, justice has now been done.

Sam, we heard him just say that he's satisfied with this sentence - justice has been done. But Bayley was on parole when he murdered Jill Meagher. Was there much argument in court about whether he should have been marked never to be released?

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: A lot of that argument we heard in court last week when the prosecution argued that he should be given a life without, a non-parole period, a minimum sentence. This was what everyone was waiting to see this morning, if Bayley would be given life with no chance of release.

In the end he was given a non-parole period of 35 years. Given that he pleaded guilty it would have been extremely unusual for him not to be given some hope of release. But 35 is a long non-parole period and Bayley will be 76 when that comes up.

Justice Nettle said that had Bayley not pleaded guilty though, he would definitely have been given life without parole. Justice Nettle said despite the prosecution arguments he did believe that Bayley had shown a small amount of true remorse.

But he said he didn't believe that there was a good chance that Bayley could be rehabilitated and therefore he said a lengthy sentence was needed to protect the community and deter other offenders.

Justice Nettle also said it's likely Bayley will have a pretty hard time in jail. He'll need to be isolated and protected for his own safety.

A leading expert on sexual assault matters believes repeat violent sexual offenders shouldn't be given the option of parole. Professor Caroline Taylor from Edith Cowan University told Simon Lauder that the Bayley case shows that the justice system doesn't always take violence against women as seriously as it should.

CAROLINE TAYLOR: I don't think he should have been given a parole period and we have to learn about the fact that when we give parole to certain types of offenders - men who commit violent crimes and rapes against women - there is a history that many of us know and the justice system is just waking up to, that these men go out and they repeat offend again.

So if someone cannot learn from this tragic, tragic outcome of the Jill Meagher case, then we as a community are lost completely and we are morally bankrupt and ineptitude as a community if we cannot learn from this?

SIMON LAUDER: So what specific lessons do you think the justice system should take from this case and the fact that he raped and murdered Jill Meagher while on parole?

CAROLINE TAYLOR: We need to be looking at what kind of offenders get parole in the first place. So we need to revisit what standardised thresholds do we have before we give, before we allow parole for a person.

So we need to start looking at what is it that secures parole, where are the flaws in how that is being assessed, and if a dangerous offender with a history of offences is released on parole, how do we monitor that person and also uphold the rights of the community to be protected from someone like this.

SIMON LAUDER: The Victorian Government has introduced measures to toughen up the laws around this. Do you think there are other states and territories in Australia which also have a problem that needs to be fixed?

CAROLINE TAYLOR: I think the entire justice system in Australia has problems with the way that they manage parole of repeat violent sex offenders and offenders who commit violence against women.

If we're going to prevent violence against women then we have to make sure that the way that we handle prisoners and handle parole doesn't allow for the type of future rapes and murders that occurred in this case here.

CAROLINE TAYLOR: We don't know about that. We need to understand that very few sex offenders come into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place, and if we measure rehabilitation by the fact that they haven't come back into contact with the criminal justice system, that can't be a measure. That just simply means that the person potentially hasn't been caught again.

Where we have an offender that we know has been caught again that is a repeat offender, given how few of them get convictions in the first place, when they've got repeat convictions, that usually means for me they've got even more victims than the one that they've been re-caught on. That should have huge alarm bells for the justice system and for the community generally.

SIMON LAUDER: Why do you think those alarm bells haven't been ringing?

CAROLINE TAYLOR: I think one of the reasons that alarm bells don't ring is that we have not taken violence against women as seriously as we ought to, and also because offenders, when they go back into the community, there are ways that they can conceal their crimes because we know that crimes against women, violent crimes and sexual assault crimes, are highly underreported.

So therefore it's much more difficult to track the criminal behaviour of a sex offender or other types of violent crimes against women because of the low reporting rate and the low conviction rate.